ugh the wooden bars of our stable-door; but it tells us of morning,
of life, and of hope, and we rise with a bound, and are as brisk as bees
in our summary toilet. With a dry crust of bread and a cup of coffee, we
are fortified for our morning's work. I have a letter of introduction
upon Herr Herzlich of the Bruhl, at the sign of the Golden Horn, between
the White Lamb and the Brass Candlestick. Every house in Leipsic has its
sign, and the numbers run uninterruptedly through the whole city, as in
most German towns; so that the clown's old joke of "Number One, London,"
if applied to them, would be no joke at all.

I leave the gloomy precincts of Little Churchyard, and descending a
slight incline over a pebbly, irregular pavement, with scarcely a sign of
footpath, arrive at the lower end of the Bruhl. There is a murmur of
business about the place, for this is the first week of the Easter Fair,
but there are none of those common sounds usually associated with the
name to English ears. No braying of trumpets, clashing of cymbals, or
hoarse groaning of gongs; no roaring through broad-mouthed horns,
smacking of canvass, or pattering of incompetent rifles. All these
vulgar noises belonging to a fair, are banished out of the gates of the
city: which is itself deeply occupied with sober, earnest trading.

Leipsic has the privilege of holding three markets in the year. The
first, because the most important, is called the Ostermesse, or Easter
Fair, and commences on Jubilee Sunday after Easter. It continues for
three weeks, and is the great cloth market of the year. The second
begins on the Sunday after St. Michael, and is called Michialismesse. It
is the great Book Fair, is also of three weeks' duration, and dates, as
does the Easter Fair, from the end of the twelfth century. The New
Year's Fair commences on the First of January, and was established in
fourteen hundred and fifty-eight. Curiously enough, the real business of
the Fair is negotiated in the week preceding its actual proclamation; it
is then that the great sales between manufacturers and merchants, and
their busy agents from all parts of the continent, are effected, while
the three weeks of the actual Fair are taken up in minor transactions.
No sooner is the freedom of the Fair proclaimed than the hubbub begins;
the booths, already planted in their allotted spaces--every inch of which
must be paid for--are found to be choked up with stock of every
descript